The Queue: It’s hard to screenshot Shadow Priests in Shadowmoon Valley
@AlexZiebart
Welcome back to The Queue, our daily Q&A feature for all of Blizzard’s games! Have a question for the Blizzard Watch staff? Leave it in the comments and we may choose it for tomorrow’s edition!
I have not leveled a toon from 1 for ages and have not done the low level Cata zones. I am thinking about playing a new toon based on current chronological order in game. What order would be considered time line correct these days? Would you start in Outlands, then Wrath, low level Cata zones, higher level Cata zones, Mists and finally WoD? I understand that I would have to use my 90 boost to start in Outlands (or a DK) and I am ok with that. Does the Cata revamp change that much as far as time lines and lore are concerned?
I think it depends on what you decide to play — which can change which content you can access. Or if not change what you can access, it changes what’s relevant. For example, if you play a death knight, you start out in Wrath of the Lich King content in the timeline, which puts you ahead of Burning Crusade content from the start. The draenei and blood elf starting zones are in the Burning Crusade timeline but I’d say that content is only relevant if you play one of those races. Playing one of those two, however, would offer the best opportunity to play things chronologically. Unless I’m forgetting something, it would go like this:
- Draenei/Blood Elf starting zones
- Outland
- Death Knight starting zone
- Northrend
- Cataclsysm-era low level Azeroth/Kalimdor
- New Cataclysm zones (Vashj’ir, Hyjal, etc)
- Pandaria
- Draenor
I’m pretty sure that’s right. Let’s ignore the whole thing where this alternate Draenor is set before the events of World of Warcraft.
Why would Admiral Taylor be a scribe and how does he perform this as a ghost?
Ghosts in Draenor seem to take death as a mere suggestion. Admiral Taylor keeps on truckin’ and so does Ahm and that gnomish bartender that slings drinks in my garrison. We have to fight multiple ghosts over the course of this expansion including the ghost of Maraad.
Anyone know what happened to last week’s podcast?
We had a minor miscommunication here. The podcast has been available on iTunes and other services this whole time, because the feed is pulled from Soundcloud, which we now use to host the podcast. When we were discussing whether we should continue publishing the “it’s available now!” post on our site, somehow a yes became a no and we never posted it. We will be posting that notice again going forward, though.
Again, though, it’s been available on Soundcloud, iTunes, and so forth this whole time.
Anyone a little underwhelmed with the BlizzCon goodie bag this year? Normally there is a pricey centerpiece item, and as the years have gone on they’re getting lesser and lesser. The “biggest” item in the goodie bag this year is the bag itself, which is admittedly nice, but when compared to statues, fall seriously short.
I do want that inflatable PSI blade, tho. If the sucker lit up, I’d be waiting until they release them (like the Bubblehearth Paladin ball) on the general store. Hell, I’m probably going to wait for it anyway. And the Hearthstone luggage tag looks nice.
I actually found this question interesting! My favorite BlizzCon bag was the one from 2008 which had no centerpiece item. It was a big collection of toys and other things — comic book, wristbands, hand sanitizer, mints, stress ball, necklace, inflatable Frostmourne, and so on. These bags are like Christmas to me, and the joy of Christmas as a kid was the process of opening stuff. I didn’t need (or even want) one huge expensive item. A bunch of little, inexpensive things was far more fun. Little toys I can interact with is, to me, more enjoyable than a statue that’s going to end up on a shelf and gather dust. Do I still use anything that came out of that 2008 bag? No, but they were fun for awhile. To me, that’s better value. I can understand the opposite, though: there are people who would prefer a statue they can display as a memento of the convention for a long time rather than a bunch of toys they’re going to toss.
I can understand people being underwhelmed. I’m totally not, though.
Do we actually know where the Priest’s Shadowfiend / Mindbender come from? are they from “The Void” with the Warlock’s Voidwalker/Lord, or are they something else entirely?
From the perspective of someone who played a Shadow Priest throughout vanilla and BC, I’m not sure there’s a lore explanation for many of the things Shadow Priests can do. Rather, Blizzard wanted to give them cool-looking spells and didn’t know how to do that with what Shadow Priests are meant to be. Shadow Priests were initially all about the mind and emotions. Their abilities were almost psionic. Mind Flay, Mind Control, and so forth. They caused suffering to their opponent by, essentially, forcing them to feel pain. The problem there is none of those things make for good spell effects.
Shadow Priest spells effects were dull, and in some ways, are still quite dull. All of the new spells they receive don’t fit that psionic vision of the Shadow Priest, but they make for cool-looking spells. Nowadays, Shadow Priests pull things from the Warlock aesthetic, from the Old Gods, from whatever is shadowy. I’m not sure there’s an established lore reason for why and how Shadow Priests do any of this other than “it looks better than nothing.”
The Mindbender is the one Shadow Priest thing that still fits that psionic ability — but where the Mindbender comes from? Who knows.
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